There is nothing to say about the fact that I am saying that I am saying nothing in the messages on the front of the envelope that are not actually messages merely an explanation of why there are no messages.
But for the one person who might be missing my weather report, it’s very windy.
I have been to the big city today to go to the Kiefer at the RA and the Tuttle at the Whitechapel where I was allowed to use the reading room in which to work on today’s piece. I have to say my piece is batter than anything in the Tuttle show and better than the burger I had in the gallery café and actually the splendid and much misused post box is more interesting too.
Please take note: there are no messages associated with today’s #Letter365.
I did a drawing years ago – about 1974 – which I still have, called “Raining in My Heart” but that was from my clouds and rainbows period. Whilst there was a sort of wistful melancholia about it there was not the sadness of the song in it nor the pain of depression. (Oh and wasn’t Melancholia a good film!) Today’s message is connected to the melancholic but was sparked by the sun being out and me being indoors.
The Captain gets a mention because Louis Hawkinsresponded to yesterday’s post and alluded to Don V. There ain’t no Santa Claus on the Midnight Stage got chosen for the topical subject – not the mention of Santa but the despair and desolation of poverty , homelessness and slavery that is growing in our world! I tried to find a live YouTube video of the number but failed. I got a bit sidetracked watching Frank Zappa playing The Torture Never Stops and Black Napkins (with Terry Bozio and Adrian Belew) – and no I am not finished with Zappa yet! Recently I’ve been watching Talking Heads Live in Rome featuring Belew too
I did find the clip below of Captain Beefheart doing Golden Birdies. I saw him with the Magic Band at the LSE about this time I have got a feeling that Blossom Toes were supporting. I saw them at LSE again with Eclection and Third Ear Band. Enjoy!
Oh and there is some art in the envelope!
Frank Zappa was pretty zany and may have appreciated the utter idiocy of this project. He pushed boundaries in music but I don’t have any information about his working with artists or what if anything he liked in the visual arts.
The piece inside doesn’t push boundaries but it is quite nice and could place it in context of my work and the influences from art history.
Whew, only just got this in the box on time and the first iteration of this posting had only a few minutes to spare.
I have been out and about today with a visit to Swanage to check out a couple of galleries and this evening to a PV at Slader’s Yard in West Bay. Everything was good and extended longer than anticipated including a late takeaway (and I had missed lunch) so I was late starting and had to work at home which meant the idea i had been toying with during the day had to be ditched as I didn’t have the materials to hand. Always good to have the challenge of starting from scratch in a limited timeframe with limited materials and coming up trumps!
Today I felt I had to do something purposefully unconnected with what I have been playing around with this last few days. So the quote from early Monty Python as readily as quotes from Frank Zappa have done. The question now is can i prevent myself from playing around with these ideas now?
I’m not sure if there is any evidence that vegetables dream though there is some evidence that plants do respond to human actions and even human thought. I guess that Frank Zappa was probably not advocating any real interaction with vegetables but more likely making pointed comments about acceptance and discrimination:
Standing there shiny and proud by your side
Holding your hand while the neighbors decide
Why is a vegetable something to hide
Well this evening I watched the Imagine documentary about Anselm Kiefer. I’m not sure what to make of him and his work. There is such a vast array that I need more exposure to find my way through it. One thing is certain, I like the way he talks about the interplay of chaos and control. I was also caught by what he said about waiting. How waiting is an important thing that we are not used to doing these days. He talked of how when he has worked on a piece he needs to wait to see how it is and it can turn out to be rubbish when removed from the agitated process of working it and sometimes it’s the reverse and he comes back to a piece he thought was no good to find new connections and that it is good. That’s where this project and #Collage365 are different and difficult. I do not have that extended waiting period. I have to have faith that I get it pretty much right first time.
There had to be a time when Frank Zappa entered this process. So many little things from the Mothers got in to me and influenced my sense of irony, my sense of humour, my politics, my musical taste, my love of the bizarre and, with Cal Schenkel’s cover art, my sense of design.
I can remember exactly where I was when I first heard the words “The Mothers of Invention” – on the bus on the way to school as we went round Rookery Corner! By 1969 “Freak Out” and “Absolutely Free” were part of the soundtrack of my life and prunes and vegetables and “Caledonia mahogany’s elbows and green things in general” were spattered through my speech. A few years later I heard the last part of “Fillmore East – June 1971” and I was smitten again, a love consummated when a month or two later I happened across a whole mass of mint-condition LPs in a village jumble sale including all the Mothers albums up to “200 Motels”. My fate was sealed
And all this was spurred by my ironic thoughts about how exiting this repetitive act of art can be (Baby, Baby, Baby, Baby) and my indoctrinated brain spewed out “This is the exciting part. This is like the Supremes see the way it builds up? Feel it?” Thanks Frank!
I have been low and feeling a bit stretched, so when I finally got to the studio I wasn’t brimming with confidence! I aimlessly and half-heartedly poked around at this and that for a while. Nothing popped into my head to even start playing with and for a while I was concerned that this might be that time, that first time, when I couldn’t come up with the goods. I knew that I mustn’t start fretting and if I applied myself – went to work – all would be well. Sure enough things began to fall into place and gradually I found myself gathering elements and ideas and in the end I had a completed piece that I was happy with. I documented it, and the envelope, and popped it in the post box and that is when I started to fret! My lack of confidence swept over me and I went through a whole negative process that encompassed far more than just tonight’s piece. It is only now having finally seen the images on screen that I feel comfortable that I’ve kept to my contract.